Photography © Jack Marty

 

The Water Was Rising

It had rained for days. They said the warning came too late. Maybe fifteen minutes. Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp along the Guadalupe River, didn’t have time to move ten feet, let alone evacuate. The water came before dawn, when the trees were still and the girls were asleep.

In Hunt, Texas, rescue teams now slide boats against mud-slick banks, searching for ten campers still unaccounted for. Deputies stand at the edge. They do not speak much. The river does not give back what it takes.

They say the girls may have been pulled under in seconds. The water moved fast. There were no screams. No calls. Just the sound of everything leaving at once.

At the command post, a mother waits with her daughter’s backpack. It’s pink, with unicorns. She holds it in her lap like it’s heavy. She says her daughter was quiet, the kind who made paper stars. She talks about the stars because talking about the girl is harder.

A father kneels by the bank, lifts a pair of soaked shoes from the rocks. One has stars, the other is plain blue. He wraps them in a towel. He doesn’t ask who they belong to. It doesn’t matter.

A body was found in a cove downstream. No one says the name yet. The sheriff says they’re still looking. Helicopters search the tree line. Boats circle back. They comb the current like men reading the same page again and again, hoping the words have changed.

People bring blankets and food. No one eats much. Volunteers hug strangers. Pastors pray with hands on shoulders. Some people light candles. Others sit alone. The grief is not loud. It stays in the chest. It does not want to be seen, but it can’t be hidden.

No one asks where the parents came from. No one checks papers. There are no questions like that. Only pictures taped to windows and names whispered in hope.

This is Texas. This is America. This is where we are when the sky turns on us and the only thing left is to hold on.

But the sky is not always the problem.

Sometimes it is a van. Sometimes it is boots on your porch. Sometimes it is the knock before sunrise. Not because of rain. Because of borders.

They come to take the man who works the night shift. They take the mother who cooks breakfast and walks her daughter to school. They do not say where they go. They do not tell you how to follow.

In South Texas, they took a boy from his class last month. ICE. They didn’t call. They didn’t wait. His mother waited outside the station for two days. No one told her where he was. They gave her a number. It rang. Then it didn’t.

They say it is the law. But they never say why the law has to feel like drowning.

The father who loses his daughter to the river is a tragedy. The father who loses his daughter to the system is a case file. One gets a vigil. The other gets a form.

But the pain is the same.

Fathers search the same way when their children are gone. Mothers kneel the same way when they pray. Children cry the same way when the people who made them safe disappear. One we call disaster. The other, policy.

You cannot hold a river responsible. It does not think. It does not choose. But a government does. A policy does. It sees. It acts. It decides. And still, the people who do this work do not hang their heads in shame. Their faces stay covered. Their eyes do not meet yours.

The water came. It tore families apart.

The officers came. They did the same.

This is not about sides. It is not about laws or flags or fences. It is about whether pain matters more when it is ours. Whether we can look at a mother without asking where she is from before asking if she is okay.

Compassion cannot have borders. Empathy does not carry a passport. It does not speak one language. It does not check for documents.

You would cry for the woman whose daughter was taken by the river. You would hold her. You would not ask where she was born. You would not ask what she carried in her wallet. You would just sit beside her and say, I’m sorry.

Do the same for the other woman, too.

There is enough disaster in the world. We do not need to build more.

And if the ones who take children in the name of order do not hang their heads in shame—maybe that is why they wear masks.

 

Grady VanWright is a poet, author, and playwright whose work blends introspection, independence, and the surreal edges of the human condition. Based in Houston, Texas, he has been writing and reading poetry for over 25 years, drawing inspiration from a lifetime of experiences and historical fascinations. His work has been published in Washington Square Review (2025), The McNeese Review, and numerous online literary journals. With a distinctive voice that merges stream-of-consciousness with moderate surrealism, Grady continues to craft evocative narratives that challenge perception and invite contemplation.

Jack Marty takes photos when he feels like it. He thinks long bios get in the way of the work.